Is there a section for film shooters?

Wilt wrote in post #18554433Even flatbeds which are more document scanners, when they have the light source for transmitted light scanning, can neutralize the orange color automatically when you select 'color neg' as what is being scanned.

Way back when, I had a scanner that stated that it had the resolution to scan negatives, but it needed a special negative carriage with a reflective back. I never bought the special carriage, so I have no experience.

Does anyone have experience using a flatbed document scanner, or a All-in-one machine. It would be interesting to know how it can be done, when you are not using a dedicated scanner.

MakisM1 wrote in post #18554449Way back when, I had a scanner that stated that it had the resolution to scan negatives, but it needed a special negative carriage with a reflective back. I never bought the special carriage, so I have no experience.

Does anyone have experience using a flatbed document scanner, or a All-in-one machine. It would be interesting to know how it can be done, when you are not using a dedicated scanner.

I have experience, which is what I described earlier. Canon 8800F. The software which Canon provided was called Navigator EX, back in the days of WinXP. It runs under Win7 64-bit, too. Procedure:

Remove the opaque reflective top cover, and substitute the powered light source top cover.

Use the same film holder as is used for color transparency to hold negs to be scanned.

Select 'Color Neg' from the choices

Select the DPI setting to be scanned

Press 'Start'

...multiple negs can be scanned simultaneously, the software recognizes each image and stores each with a unique name.

Flatbed scanners are set up to focus on the glass. Placing a negative on the glass often ends up with odd artifacts. Placing it in a holder above the glass can place it slightly out of focus.

film base varies with brands and types. Even with batches and processing. Best results are had with precise film "profiles".

I think film scanning is a lot like printing at home. If you want a hobby, or are just interested in doing it yourself, go for it. With a lot of work, the proper equipment, and trial and error you will probably get good results.

I have a good tripod, and an EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro. Is backlighting negatives and using my macro for a scanner an option? Seems reasonable, but leaves me with negative images and and orange cast.

Another sidebar.

I honestly appreciate all the help and suggestions given here, but I don't want make this too complicated. At TheDarkroom.com, medium resolution scans (good for 8"x10" prints) are $5 per roll. High res are $9/roll. 4"x6" prints are $5/roll. That isn't a ton of money for one or the other. I'd happily spend $5/roll for decent scan I don't have to put a butt-load of time into. With that in mind, is scanning worth the trouble?

Anyone else remember when we dropped of a roll at Photo Hut, went to A&W for a Root Beer, picked up our prints an hour later, and were happy with that? Me neither.

I have a good tripod, and an EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro. Is backlighting negatives and using my macro for a scanner an option? Seems reasonable, but leaves me with negative images and and orange cast.

The devil is in the details. How will you light your neg? How will you hold it flat? They curl in the winter, and sometimes curl the other way in the summer. But yes, in principle this will work.

Use a blue filter and your negs will be orange no more.

Another sidebar.

I honestly appreciate all the help and suggestions given here, but I don't want make this too complicated. At TheDarkroom.com, medium resolution scans (good for 8"x10" prints) are $5 per roll. High res are $9/roll. 4"x6" prints are $5/roll. That isn't a ton of money for one or the other. I'd happily spend $5/roll for decent scan I don't have to put a butt-load of time into. With that in mind, is scanning worth the trouble?

Passable. But certainly not as good as my scanner software could do for me automatically when it knew it was dealing with a color negative (1st photo, post 22). Still need to try to tweak contrast and maybe shadow zone. In short, having to do this for every neg would be tedious...and I got lucky in this photo by having some areas in the photo which clearly need to be 'neutral' for setting WB and Tint, and not every photo has that available.

Passable. But certainly not as good as my scanner software could do for me automatically when it knew it was dealing with a color negative (1st photo, post 22). Still need to try to tweak contrast and maybe shadow zone. In short, having to do this for every neg would be tedious...and I got lucky in this photo by having some areas in the photo which clearly need to be 'neutral' for setting WB and Tint, and not every photo has that available.

Color negs are designed to give a low gamma (low contrast) original. This is very beneficial because the negative can capture more of the original scene's dynamic range. Color negative paper has a high gamma to compensate for the low gamma of the negative. Thus the print looks great. The two media are designed for each other.

Color slides, on the other hand, are high gamma. They look brilliant when projected in a darkened room.

This was all academic back in the day when you were doing color neg prints or projecting slides. But when you venture away from these mainstream modes, you can run into some surprises. Thus, printing a slide gives all kinds of problems because the slide is so contrasty and the photographic paper has trouble dealing with it. And as we see here, scanning a neg gives an anemic-looking scan because the original is low contrast (by design).

These issues can be overcome. In the olden days, color slides were routinely silver-masked before professional printing, to lower contrast. In the case of color neg scanning, you have to boost the contrast, besides filtering the color mask.

Bassat wrote in post #18554919It is starting to sound like scanning is not going to be worth the trouble. $5/roll for decent scans is sounding better and better.

Where did you find $5 for 'medium quality' scan of film?

Flatbed scanners do typically 1200 or 4800 dpi, and at 4800 dpi the scanning time is reallllllyyyy slow! Using the Canon 8800F flatbed, and its 135 holders holds two strips of 6 exp., and one full pass of the scanner takes just under one minute at 1200 dpi (resulting in 2MPixel image). (The software automatically then files each image individually automatically.) So 10 sec/image nominal time is not a huge time sink. But scanning at 4800 dpi (resulting in 30MPixel image) takes 8 minutes to do a one-pass scan at 4800 dpi, or 40 sec. per image

And you need to do a reasonable job of dust removal before the scan, so as to minimize any loss of detail arising from the automated dust removal software.

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